


You Got it All Wrong

by sinisterkid92



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Force Bond, Reylo - Freeform, Star Wars: The Last Jedi Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-14 23:00:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13017999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinisterkid92/pseuds/sinisterkid92
Summary: After the end of TLJ Kylo is feeling the emptiness of what now seems lost to him and the rejection. He believes he knows best, but does he?





	You Got it All Wrong

**Author's Note:**

> This was written by a very sleep deprived author who really should have been sleeping instead of typing this up. If there are errors it is because of this. I'm seeing TLJ for a second time tomorrow and wanted this up before then because I'm sure I'll get new ideas that completely debunk whatever I wrote just here.
> 
> Hope you enjoy this!

He should hate it. That name when she says it. He should hate it, and it should fill him with the rage that had erupted from inside of him when his father -- Han Solo -- had let that name out in the open again. The boy Ben was dead, was supposed to be buried and obliterated by the dark side years ago. At least, that’s what he said. 

He believed it for a long time. Believed that he’d vanquished and killed the past but it kept showing up. It was everywhere, surrounding him and suffocating him at every turn lately. Ever since she showed up again. Maybe before that too. They were scary and treacherous thoughts he hadn’t dared to explore under the Supreme Leader’s thumb. Now he was gone. He killed him for her, but also because it was all wrong. Unlike Snoke he wasn’t doing it for the purpose of power as the end-all. No, he was doing it because it was all wrong.

That name. It had been a long time since he’d heard it, his father shouting it over the bridge on the Star Killer had felt like a stab to his heart. A reminder of the failure he was. No matter what he did it felt impossible to fall over to the dark side completely, to vanquish the light inside of him that tickled the conflict inside him up to a storm. All he wanted was to fall completely. To get lost in his cause and no longer feel conflicted about what he was doing. He knew he was right, he knew it. Yet there was that one part of him that wouldn’t let go.

When she said it, it sounded different. Softer and more home than any place he’d ever known. It beckoned him to her, drew him in because he wanted more of that. Wanted more of what she had to offer where he didn’t have to hide anymore. Didn’t need a mask to pretend he was someone worthy. Didn’t need a different name to cut himself down the middle between who he was -- the one who was betrayed, abandoned, and cast away -- and who he is now. All he knew when she scaled away all the layers to find the true him underneath was that he didn’t want to leave her. He wanted the future he’d foreseen. With her. 

Rejection stung as it always did. With the hours between then and now he’d struggled to remember how it went down. Was she trying to kill him, or just leave?

Together they had fought against the praetorian guards that had come for them after Kylo murdered Snoke in a deceptive move he didn’t think he could pull off. Then he’d seen her, seen her screaming out in pain as Snoke took and took what he wanted an needed from her. He’d seen people in pain before. Had caused that amount of pain too many times to count. He couldn’t feel it in him, but he could feel her. Not through the force, but like a presence by his heart that pulsed and trashed. It had vibrated in his ears, ran down his spine. It made up his mind. 

He was sure. Sure that this was what the vision meant. That he was about to find it. Find her. That future he’d seen with her, so clear and all that he wanted. Like a dream realized that finally made him understand what it was he wanted. With her, with everything in his life. For a long time he had been searching for something ill defined that would help him put his past behind him. The pain, the hurt, everything that had kept him awake at night as a child that cut him to the bone, left him raw and unable to find purchase to build himself up again. 

Had she tried to kill him? His hand was out stretched to her, to the future they were destined to have together. Instead of taking it, instead of realizing that it was with him she belonged she’d reached for the lightsaber instead. 

That moment were all bad moments wrapped into one. His father’s quiet disappointment when he realized his son was force sensitive like his mother and uncle. Her mother sending him away when the whispers at the back of his mind started to crawl in closer. Luke, standing over him as he slept, with his lightsaber drawn. Then Rey reaching for the saber, rejecting him like everyone else in his life had before her. 

He wanted nothing more than to erase the bad moments. Obliterate them like he was supposed to have done with Ben Solo. Yet, each moment with her rebirthed another part of Ben that should have been gone forever. 

He should have hated her saying his name, but now as he shut himself in his chambers he kept recalling how soft his name sounded on her lips. No one had said his name like that. Not since he was a young child, before they’d seen the force in him. When he was just him, and loved just for who he was. Like he mattered. She said it like he mattered.

The rage dissipated fast. Didn’t linger in the core of him like it used to do, feeding off of hurt and anger until it became a living thing he could no longer control. When he saw her standing on the Falcon looking down at him, disappointment and something he couldn’t place, not yet, it felt like all he’d done was for nothing. Though Luke was gone, he’d felt it, it wasn’t by his own hand. It shouldn’t have comforted him but it did. His cheek still burned when he thought about his father’s hand on it, soft and forgiving in his last moments. Yet, he couldn’t help but wonder if killing him would have helped him but it behind him.

That always seemed to be the answer, but why didn’t it work for him? Why couldn’t he slaughter them all and move on like a blank slate? Rey had closed the door on him, on them.

He still felt her. Not like a presence like before. There was no way she had cut him off from her. Neither were able to do that anymore. It had gone too far. They were too connected. Their destinies intertwined. 

\---

Weeks go without them talking. It’s an empty space beside him, inside him. He doesn’t try to reach out and he doesn’t know if it’s because he’s ashamed or if it’s because he’s too proud. For the first time in a long time he trusted the force, not just the dark side it but the entirety of it, that when necessary it would bring them together again. 

Meanwhile he buried himself in his work with the First Order, building something new out of the wreckage of what was before. Hux was luring behind every corner, waiting for his opportunity to pounce and usurp the leadership of the First Order. It was an annoying but welcoming distraction from that thing he wanted to hide himself from. Not loneliness, that wasn’t new. That he could manage, barely feel anymore. It was the emptiness his life became without her. Knowing what could be, feeling it inside him and then pulled from him was like a plug opened in him and drained everything. Left was that emptiness.

He felt her like a shadow sometimes, and almost appearance. Despite it all he knew she was happy, the calm in the weeks following the attack on the First Order and the new hierarchy building up inside of it left her able to enjoy herself. He’d sworn to kill her. When she flickered by him, a blink then gone, his resolve faded. He wished he could kill the bond that connected them, his feelings for this girl who ended up being everything for him. 

It must have been a month or more when he felt that buzzing in his ears, the tingling of a connection in his spine when he turned around to face her for the first time. No longer wearing those three buns he used to see her wear, trying to be the child she used to be, no her hair was let out and blowing out of her face by what must be wind. He couldn’t see where she was, he never could. He wasn’t supposed to know. 

“Ben,” she said, voice low and devoid of any hostility. There was a softness about her that he hadn’t paid attention to before. Not a vulnerability, just soft edges and a warmness that he wanted to lean into. 

“Why now?” he asked instead of greeting her. It felt redundant. He felt the wind against his face, harsh blows that whipped across his face. “Where are you?”

She knew he didn’t ask for the name of the planet, and smiled. “On a cliff.” Suddenly he got the feeling of a sudden steep drop in by his feet. Hundreds of feet down into a pitch black ocean. He could almost see it.

“Get away!” he shouted, moving to push her away but she simply took a step back instead. The dizzying feeling of the drop in front of him stopped. 

“I thought you wanted me dead,” her words fell flat. Yes, he did. The way he pursued her after, his rage against her. He would take it back if he could, now that he saw her standing in front of him wearing… was that her night clothes? They were white, the kind of yellow-white that he remembered from growing up at the front lines of the rebellion. He remembered how soft the linen was, used and smelling of dust that never washed out. 

“Yes…” he said carefully, stepping closer to her again and she didn’t move this time. “For a while.” He wanted to touch her again, not just her hand. He wanted to touch her face, feel the softness of her cheeks against the pads of his fingertips, brush his hand through her hair. Maybe, maybe he also wanted to kiss her. Her lips against his didn’t feel like a bad idea at all. 

Her eyes snapped up to his, as if she heard what he was thinking. “Why are you here?” she asked him. 

“I don’t know.” He didn’t know how this worked, hadn’t been able to piece it together yet. Sometimes she was just there, without warning. He hadn’t thought he’d see her again like this when she shut the door on him two months earlier. 

“You killed so many good people Ben.” He wondered if it was weird that he liked that she still called him Ben, even after unleashing that fury on her and the rebellion. 

“I had to.” She narrowed her eyes at him, the wind now whipping against both of their faces, like a furious storm unleashing its anger at the connection the two of them had, desperate to split them apart. “We have to let the past die, it’s damaged and we need to put it out of its misery. They’re fighting against something that will never exist again, that should have been left in the past to rot.”

“That doesn’t make it right!” she shouted, her body was thrown into motion towards him but her steps faltered before she reached him as if catching her unconcious pull towards him before it took her too far. 

“It is war.” She shook her head. “As long as the resistance exists we cannot move forward and create a better future.”

“Yet you don’t think the First Order needs to be stopped?” He watched her. He’d met few people in the many years since he fell under Snoke’s power that had dared to challenge him like she. Dared to be outright in their fury at him. This honesty extended to those soft moments too, he remembered their tentative hands brushing up against each other. No one had dared to rely on him like she did, trust him like she did, confide in him like she did. There was no one like her and he could not help but remain in awe of her in her presence. 

“The First Order is changing.”

She shook her head. “If the resistance cannot change under the same structures then neither can the First Order. If you truly believe we have to kill the past then you have to do the same.” Her head whipped away from him, looking at something in the distance. Was someone calling her name? 

“Trust me, Rey,” he pleaded. She watched him, felt him inside her and his desperate longing for her. It was immense, seductive, but she stepped away from him. 

“Trust _me_ , Ben.” 

Then she was gone. 

\--

Months go by, and he figures it out. He thinks at least. More and more often they find themselves together, most of the time they remain in silence just needing the connection between them to comfort them. He thinks it’s when they’re both feeling lonely and needing someone to lean on that the bond they had pulled them together. 

With the months it happened more and more, as if the need for each other’s presence was amplified with each connection they made. Their dependence grew, something in it beckoning the two of them together with such force that neither could resist. No matter how powerful they became it wasn’t enough to sever the bond between them. It just became stronger and strong, always ahead of them.

The more in touch she became with the force, becoming stronger and stronger, he felt the same inside of him. The balance was struck between them and nothing could rock that, just death. Just the mere thought of her dying filled him with inexplicable rage and grief that made his resolve even stronger. 

He’d seen it. One day she would be by his side, and he by hers, together fighting the same cause. The past was dying, he’d foreseen it, and it would fall with them at each other’s side.

There was no way he would be letting go of this vision. It was the one thing that kept him going now. The fight grew nearer. The final fight. Rey knew it too as they were pulled together again. 

“You know it’s not too late,” she said before he’d even seen her. He turned around to face her. She was standing just next to him, not even a feet away. 

“It is,” he said simply, they’d gone over this before. 

“Ben, come with me.” She held out her hand. In all these months they hadn’t touched again. Hadn’t felt her skin against his in so long. His hand ached.

“It’s too late Rey,” he said. He reached out, not to take her hand but to touch her face. What if she died? He thought, it felt like a punch to his solar plexus and he halted his movement for just a few long beats. Then he reached out again, his fingertips brushing her face…

Oh, he thought as another vision appeared for them. He’d been wrong.


End file.
